Target Practice in Henefer

Traditionally, at about this time each year, my Uncle Mark and his sons would come into town. Then my dad, my brother, two of my uncles and a lot of my cousins (all boys) would go deer hunting up in Henefer. As all of the boys have gotten older, they tend to do their own thing now when it comes to hunting. And the older guys no longer care to stay in a camper all night out in the cold! This year, instead of hunting, they just decided to go target shooting for the day up in Henefer. And, for the first time ever, a couple of girls were alowed to tag along! Me and my cousin Kelsey. Once it finally stopped raining, we had a really fun time. We had a number of different types of targets, including shooting clay pigeons with the shotguns. I have to say that Kurt was probably the best shot, with Kyle a very close second! Hopefully we do this again soon. It was great!

Disneyland and the joys of flying standby!

So about a month ago, my family decided that we wanted to take a quick trip to California to see Disneyland all decorated for Halloween. Our family LOVES Disneyland! I couldn't even guess at how many times we've been. I think that my parents have been at least once a year since they were married. Or if they've missed a year, that's not too common. In fact, they've now been twice this year. Anyways, as Scott and I were growing up, we visited Disney most years as well. But I haven't been back for about 6 years. So this trip was long overdue! Since I work for JetBlue, we can fly standby down to California. Perfect! None of us really had a lot of time that we could take off of work, so we decided on a very fast trip. Down early Thursday morning, spend the day in Disneyland, fly back early Friday morning!

Ahhh...the joys of standby! For three weeks, the flights looked fantastic for us to get on. There were about 50 seats available on the flight, and only 6 people besides my family on the standby list. Plenty of room! 2 days before the flight, about 25 seats had sold on the plane, but that still left 25 and still only 11 people on the standby list! Perfect! Then comes the day before the flight! Every time I checked, things looked worse. More and more people we signing up for standby! By midnight there were over 40 people listed. I was just panicking! We can check in to the flight up to 4 hours before, and the order you get on board goes off of who checks in first. So I knew that it'd be a race to get checked in. Somehow, miracle of miracles, I got all 5 of us checked in fast enough that we could get on! But there is nothing more stressful than being up at 3:30 in the morning, fingers crossed that you can all get on a flight in 4 hours! I didn't want to let my family down by not being able to get us on!

The flight was great. Gotta love those TV's! So, we picked up the rental car, checked in to the hotel, walked to Disneyland, and then it was time for fun! There were pumpkins and Halloween decorations EVERYWHERE! It was so much fun to see!

Here's dad at the entrance to the park. If you look closely you can see that they made Giant pumpkin versions of some of the Characters above the entrance.

The Haunted House was one of the things that I was the most excited for! I love The Nightmare Before Christmas! It was great to see how they had completely changed all of the decorations both inside and out to go along with the movie!

Over in California Adventure, they had an entire area called "Candy Corn Acres". Everything was done with giant candy corns! They had windmills, corn stalks, flowers, and lots more! Candy Corns are one of Scott's favorite goodies, so I had to take a couple of pics of him and Kelli with the Candy Corns. Sorry, one of the pictures is a bit dark.

The rides were all great. I hadn't been on Pirates since they updated it with characters from the movies. And Scott got to go on the Matterhorn. He was pretty insistent that we needed to get on it asap, because it seems to always break down before we get a chance to go on it! We went on the Tower of Terror a couple of times. Even convinced dad to go on it the second time! The park wasn't too busy so we got to ride everything that we wanted to. I think that the longest wait we had was about a half hour. It was a really fun day!

Surprisingly, the best part of the day was probably the fireworks show! I have NEVER seen such a fantastic show! I really wish that I'd had a video camera with me! It was all Disney Villains. They had music and lights and images projected on a big screen. Even fireballs! Also, they lit up the castle with all of these different colored lights that somehow transformed it into looking like a haunted house! It was just such a fantastic quick trip! I think that we need to make a Halloween visit to Disneyland a new tradition!

Halloween at Disneyland

I am really excited! My family is heading out Thursday morning for a quick trip to Disneyland! I haven't been to Disneyland since the Jay Break-Up trip! And that time I was so stressed out that I couldn't even enjoy myself. So, I'm pretty excited. I've never seen Disney all decked out for Halloween, but the rest of my family has. And they say that it's great! Space Mountain and the Haunted House have all been changed for Halloween. The Haunted House is the Nightmare Before Christmas theme! Considering that I've been working for JetBlue for 18 months, it's about time that we finally made time to take a trip to Disneyland. I'll take lots of pictures and post them when we get back!

Book Reviews

So I decided to make a bit of a change to how I do my blog. I am part of an online book club, and I've had several people talk to me about a blog that is strictly book reviews. Well, I don't really want people that I only know online reading about my personal things in my regular blog, so I'm going to start a second blog that's reviews. I'm sure that I will still be talking about books quite a bit on here, but the second blog will only be about books! On that blog, I'm also going to open up the comments section so that anyone can comment, instead of only people that have the right accounts. So, for those of you looking for some good books to read, I hope that you check out my other blog! The link for it is up on the right hand column of the page. For the next few weeks, there will probably be a ton of new posts over there as I write reviews of a lot of my favorite books! I hope that you enjoy it!

3 Important Anniversaries

The next three days are all very important milestones for my family. All for very different reasons, and kinda fun that they are all together!

The 1st Important Day - Tomorrow, October 3rd, is my dad's Birthday! I'll refrain from teasing him about his age, because I'd hate to embarrass him! LOL! Instead, here's a little blast from the past pic of him. This was taken only a couple of years after my parents were married. I've always gotten a kick out of this picture, with his Mr. Tough Guy look. Plus on more than one occasion, I've seen my brother looking the exact same way! Just thought that it was kinda fun!



The 2nd Important Day - The next important day has always been called My Special Day. On October 4th, 1982, when I was 6 months old, I was sealed to my family in the Jordan River Temple. As most of you know, I am adopted. My mom and dad got me when I was 6 days old (on April Fools Day, but that's a whole other story!). I'm not sure what the waiting time is now for adoptions to be finalized, but back then you had to wait 6 months. This first picture is of our family outside of the courtroom that morning. The judge had just declared the adoption finalized! Sorry about the smudge on the picture! Someone had their finger over camera, and this was WAY before digital cameras!



From what I've been told, we practically went straight to the temple after leaving the courtroom. I, of course, don't remember anything about it. But I think that Scott, who was 3 at the time, has a couple of brief memories of it. I'm not sure though, we haven't really talked about it in a number of years! Here's our family, dressed all in white, standing outside of the temple!



The 3rd Important Day - October 5th is Scott and Kelli-Rae's 7th Wedding Anniversary! Wow! 7 years! That still seems crazy to me. Seems like they just barely got married. I am still so happy for them. They are perfect for each other. Scott dated a lot of girls that I really liked before he met Kelli, but none of them really seemed to complete him. I never felt that he seemed completely himself around all of them. The first time that I saw him with Kelli-Rae, I just knew that they would be fantastic together. They are just like two peas in a pod! I still have to laugh at them every time that I see them together. They are just constantly laughing and teasing each other and goofing around. I love it! I think that Kelli-Rae is the best thing that ever happened to Scott. And the great thing is that he'd be the first person to whole heartedly agree with me! This is one of my favorite pictures with Scott and Kelli and my parents.



So, those are the 3 important dates that my family will be celebrating this weekend!